In their review entitled “Antimicrobial Resistance and Respiratory Infections“, IIDR’s Dr. Gerry Wright and PhD student Allison Guitor discuss the many ways in which respiratory bacteria can avoid or overcome antibiotics, while highlighting other important aspects of antimicrobial resistance.

Every year, the IIDR provides 10 $1000 fellowship awards to eligible undergraduate students and IIDR trainees working throughout the summer. Wright Lab undergraduate student Sommer Chou is a recipient this year.

In a recent study involving Dr’s MacNeil, Surette, Wright, and past and current IIDR trainees, a collection of gut isolates were screened for their ability to inactivate the widely used antineoplastic drug doxorubicin, identifying a strain of Raoultella planticola.

Every year, the IIDR provides 10 $1000 fellowship awards to eligible undergraduate students and IIDR trainees working throughout the summer. Wright Lab undergraduate student Haley Zubyk is a recipient this year.

Throwback to July 2007 at the grand opening ceremony of the IIDR. Michael G. DeGroote’s gift of $10M transformed an ambitious idea into a reality. Today, the IIDR has become an epicenter for some of McMaster's most outstanding research efforts.

The American nation is in a “moment of crisis,” Donald Trump declared, as he launched into his nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last week. “The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life.”Source: Green Planet Monitor

The Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences has named Dr. Gerry Wright, professor and scientific director of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research (IIDR), as the recipient of the 2016 NRC Research Press Senior Investigator Award.Source: McMaster Daily News

Studying microbes inevitably causes a reordering of one’s perceptions: for more than two billion years, they were the only life on this planet, and they remain in many ways its dominant life form. Estimates of the number of bacteria—5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000—are higher than for all the stars, and Epstein noticed that when he stained his microbes with fluorescent dyes and placed them under a microscope they looked just like constellations in deep space. Source: The New Yorker

'Resistance to antibiotics is a challenge of global proportion that is undermining advances of modern medicine,' says Gerry Wright, director of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research. 'We are losing our ability to control infection because microbes are evolving resistance at a faster pace than we are delivering new antibiotics. This funding will help our team find creative ways to solve the crisis.'Source: McMaster Daily News

Canadian livestock consume more than 1.6 million kilograms of antibiotics every year, according to the Canadian Animal Health Institute. But what are the effects of those antibiotics on the human body? Public health experts say the use of antimicrobials in food animals could have serious implications on our overall health and future resistance to infectious disease.Source: Global News